And Then Everything Changed
by deemarie
Summary: A story about The Journey of Natty Gann. What happens next to Natty? Does she just settle down with her dad? Does she never see Harry again?
1. Default Chapter

And Then Everything Changed

By Deemarie

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Etc, etc, etc.

My whole life changed at that moment, although I didn't realize it until later. Harry kissed me before he went to California. He kissed me, Natty Gann. He didn't think I was just one of the guys like all my friends in Chicago.

And I left. I went looking for my dad. I still thought that everything could be the same. Just me and Dad against the world. I guess I didn't count the fact that I'd hitched, jumped trains, and stole my way half way across the United States. That changes a person. 

I tried for a long time. Dad set me up in a boarding house in Seattle while he continued working at logging camps around the state. I didn't do much of anything. I spent a lot of time wandering the streets and looking for work. But they weren't hiring men, let alone fourteen year old girls. I even tried going back to school. I quit that the second day. I couldn't be cooped up listening to some old biddy trying to tell me about geography and mountains when I'd seen them for real.

The best thing in my life were my letters. I wrote to Dad and Harry a lot. Dad wrote back often and Harry not so often. With Harry you always had to kind of read between the lines. He missed me, I could tell but he never said so. He was always writing about the other guys or the kind of work they were doing. It was the little things like calling me Natty instead of kid or putting down that he read my letters more than once. Once I could even make out where he had signed Love Harry. He scratched out the love but I could read it through the ink.

Dad tried to talk with me about my restlessness but it didn't change me none. I kept wondering the streets and looking for something to do. I guess I really can tell how The Wolf was feeling at the end of our journey together.

I guess one day I just snapped. Dad was out of town again and I was so lonely and bored. I'd made some friends like Anna the pencil seller but she wasn't nowhere to be found that day. I up and left Seattle. I guess I had some half-cocked idea that I was going to head back to Chicago for a visit. I got about fifteen miles out before it hit me what that was going to do to Dad if he found me gone when he got back. I had to stay in town until he rolled through between jobs.

He came back on my fifteenth birthday. It'd been about a week since I'd hopped a train to Chicago and I had time to do some thinking. The happiest I'd ever been was with Harry and he'd wanted me to go to California with him. I had to go out and find him. It was hard talking to Dad about it but finally I got him to understand. Dad was the focus of the first part of my life and I still loved him. But we all got to grow up sometime and I did mine. Harry was the next part of my life. I hoped anyway. So I started a letter to him.

Dear Harry,

I think I'll be passing through California pretty quick. Do you think I can look you up?

Love,

Natty.

And with that letter I hoped that the next part of my life had begun.

AN Well? What'd you think? Does anyone actually know the movie _The Journey of Natty Gann?_ Should I continue?


	2. Meanwhile, in California

Disclaimer: I own nothing, except a huge tuition bill. However, if someone out there owns Harry I'll add the purchase to my Visa.

I joined the CCC hoping that eventually I'd forget. I would forget about a kid I met on some train. Usually I could forget almost anything. Remembering makes you weak and when you work the rails, you can't be weak. That's how you get hurt. But I couldn't forget Natty Gann. Natty with her sleek brown hair and magical smile. I kissed her before I left and it was perfect. I lived that kiss in my memories for weeks, until her first letter came. Then I was too busy trying to see if I could get anything out of it, anything at all.

I lived for those letters Natty sent me. It sounded as if she was really struggling in Seattle. I knew what she was going through. The first time I had to live under a roof again after some time on the road I thought I'd never been so close to suffocating in my life. 

At first she sounded like she'd eventually adjust to life with her dad again. But then the letters started to turn depressed. It was hard for Natty to follow someone else's rules, not that her dad was around a lot or had many rules. But she chafed at the bit and, well, I guess I knew I'd be getting a letter telling me she was coming out one day. And a while after we split up she did send me that letter. Natty was going to be dropping in on me! 

For me, that meant one thing. I was going to marry her. I loved her, although the closest I got to saying it was writing it down and scratching it out. So I took ten dollars I saved and bought her a cheap little ring. Nothing fancy, you understand, but all I could afford.

The day she got to California was the happiest day of my life. I'd asked my supervisor to let me have the day off to meet my Natty at the bus station and as soon as she walked off I asked her to marry me. Lucky for me, she said yes.

We walked hand in hand to a court house and got married that very day. Looking back, I don't know what we were thinking. We were just two crazy kids, me eighteen and she was fifteen. She got herself a room at a boarding house and I went back to the CCC the next day. 

Nine months later our son Jack was born. I don't know how she made it through those first years. First Jack, then Daisy a year after that and two years after that Samuel. And I was away in the CCC and then in the Army.

I loved that woman for her strength and her courage and her heart. I guess that's why even now, when she's been gone for so long, I can't forget her. And I hope we never do.

Author's Note: I know, I know. CCC people weren't allowed to be married. I'm really sorry, but it worked for the story so call it AU if you have to, okay?


End file.
